126 Quotes by John Ashbery

Reading is a pleasure, but to finish reading, to come to the blank space at the end, is also a pleasure.

Much that is beautiful must be discarded So that we may resemble a taller Impression of ourselves.

I could have made a casserole out of these things, but you always say you like to know what you’re eating.

I write with experiences in mind, but I don’t write about them, I write out of them.

Try a little subtlety in self-defense; it’ll help, you’ll find out.

You have to try to imagine an ideal reader, who’s neither stupid nor able to know what your thoughts are.

My poetry is often criticized for a failure to communicate, but I take issue with this; my intention is to communicate and my feeling is that a poem that communicates something that’s already known by the reader is not really communicating anything to him and in fact shows a lack of respect for him.

Its a bit mad. Too bad, I mean, that getting to know each just for a fleeting second Must be replaced by unperfect knowledge of the featureless whole Like some pocket history of the world, so general As to constitute a sob or wail.

Until, accustomed to disappointments, you can let yourself rule and be ruled by these strings or emanations that connect everything together, you haven’t fully exorcised the demon of doubt that sets you in motion like a rocking horse that cannot stop rocking.